Three essays on economics of *education in developing countries

Education is not a miracle medicine to cure all social problems such as child labor, poverty and unequal income distribution. Moreover, education is an expensive treatment. The main explicit costs are physical equipment and instructors' wages. The major implicit cost is the opportunity cost of foregone earnings.;In these essays, I deal with three different topics but all strictly related to education. Moreover, I concentrate on developing countries. This dissertation examines how participation in education is associated with three different characteristics of development, namely: fertility, the incidence of child labor, and urbanization. This can help policy makers better understand how education affects different characteristics of development.;The first essay deals with education and fertility in Middle Eastern countries, a region with a very high fertility rate. A model of fertility will be presented to analyze the impact of female and male education and wages on fertility. Both theoretical and empirical results show that fertility rate is strictly associated with female education rather than male education. Sadly, the women of this region have limited opportunities to receive education. I collected data for fourteen countries in the Middle East from 1980 to 1998. Panel estimation will be employed.;The second topic is child labor. Much theoretical and empirical research has been conducted at the micro level on this issue. On the other hand, not much macro analysis of the child labor problem has been investigated. The aim of the research is to assess the association between child labor and education in a cross section of African countries. This paper focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, which has the highest child labor incidence, between 1960 and 1999.;The third topic is urbanization in Middle East and North Africa. This research investigates reasons for urbanization in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) between 1980 and 1997, a post-oil period. A theoretical model will be presented to analyze the impact of education to urbanization. In the Western World, urbanization is an outcome of industrialization. Results show that industrialization, even after oil, is not relevant with urbanization in MENA. Moreover, poverty in the agricultural sector also does not affect urbanization in this period. What could be the main reasons? This research suggests that education; amenities, commercial activities, and income are promoting urbanization in MENA. Plus, this paper searches the relevancy of various educational characteristics such as levels (primary, secondary and tertiary), genders and lagged years of education with urbanization. Besides human capital acquisition, the accumulation of university institutions in big cities is another motive for migration in MENA.